Tag Archives: Good Friday

Religion

The olive press

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Maundy Thursday – that’s the ancient name the church has given to the Thursday before Good Friday. “Maundy” comes from the Latin word “mandatum,” meaning “command.” That’s a reference to Jesus’ words from John 13:34, during the Last Supper: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” He’d already given the Golden Rule, to treat others the way we’d like them to treat us. This was a “new,” further commandment – to go beyond that rule (which is difficult enough) and love one another (I assume He means primarily other believers, though I’m sure it’s not limited to them), in the way that He has loved us – that is, all the way through suffering and death.

After the Last Supper, they went out to the Mount of Olives, a regular retreat of theirs, where Jesus prayed among the olive trees. The video above, from Our Daily Bread Ministries, explains some of the significance of that location, in relation to the events.

I knew a pastor once who insisted that when Jesus prayed that “this cup” might pass Him by, what He actually meant was that He was afraid His physical body would give out before He’d completed the work of suffering. That He was praying to stay alive until the job was done. The pastor didn’t like the idea, apparently, that Jesus could be afraid of mere physical pain.

That never made sense to me. I believe in the Incarnation – Jesus was true God and true Man. If He didn’t instinctively recoil from the prospect of excruciating suffering, it seems to me He wouldn’t be fully Man – which our creeds affirm that He was. We’re told He was subject to all kinds of temptations just as we are. I assume that one of those temptations must be the temptation to take the easy way out.

Have a blessed Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

Music, Religion

‘O Sacred Head, Now Wounded’

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Good Friday. I have a book I want to review, but I’ve got to address more important things on the holiest weekend of the year.

Above, a beautiful rendition of O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, with words I’m not familiar with. The hymn’s origins are complicated. The original poem, of which this hymn is just a section, was written either by St. Bernard of Clairvaux or by Bishop Arnulf of Villers-la-Ville. The section was translated into German by the famed Lutheran hymn writer Paul Gerhardt, a pastor who suffered greatly during the Thirty Years War. The traditional setting is by no less a composer than Johan Sebastian Bach. The traditional American translation of the text came from James W. Alexander, a Presbyterian churchman and scholar.

To my mind, this is the best Lenten hymn. But there are many other fine ones out there too.

I want to write about a point of apologetics tonight. I’ve probably laid it out here before. But it seems to me the absolute, rock-bottom argument for Christianity.

Your mileage may vary. I may even be talking through my hat. All our proofs, I am certain, will whirl away like autumn leaves when we behold the One whom Father Ailill likes to call the Beloved.

Ask anyone what’s the most important thing in the universe. Doesn’t matter who. Christian, Jew, atheist. (This may be different in countries with non-Abrahamic religions – I know less about them. But I’m addressing my neighbors, my fellow Americans and Europeans.)

You know what the answer is: Love. Love is the answer. Love is all you need. The greatest of these is love.

But does this make sense outside of the Christian faith?

I’m sure there are lots of atheists around who also say, “Love is the answer, love is the greatest thing.” They take it for granted. It’s the minimal place-holder for religion they’ve been raised with (even if they were raised by other atheists).

But if there is no God, what does that mean? If the ultimate truth of the universe is impersonal, how can love be the answer? Objects don’t love. Energy doesn’t love. Rocks don’t love. Trees don’t love.

Only persons love.

If some Person doesn’t lie behind all the material things we know, then love means nothing. Because sentient creatures will die out eventually, and then love will go away. And it won’t be the answer.

Christianity says that a Person made the universe, and loved us, and demonstrated the greatest love conceivable in the atonement and resurrection.

Blab about love all you want, but if you don’t believe in that God, then it seems to me you’re just surviving on the scraps you picked up under Christianity’s table.

You could choose Judaism or Islam, I suppose, but there’s no parallel act of love.

Religion

Does God View All Sins to be Equal?

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This being Good Friday, I want to write about an idea that has confused some people, the nature of sin. I’ve heard recently of people saying all sin is equal in God’s eyes so does God condemn an abuser with the same severity as the gossip? No, he does not, and you wouldn’t have to read far into the law God gave Israel in Exodus through Deuteronomy to see that the proscribed punishments intend to fit the severity of the crime.

All sin does separate us from God, even the minor ones, and that is because these sins are the fruit of the original sin that accomplished our separation. The Fall is our original rebellion, the act that put all of us into a state of sin. The toddler screaming at his parents isn’t divinely separated for screaming. The teenager repeatedly refusing parental accountability isn’t marked a divine rebel for these acts. Both of these are examples of the fruit of original sin, and this is the sin that separates all of us from God. Only in this way are all sins equal.

 “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given” (Rom 5:12-13 ESV).

Even before we had a law to identify the fruit of sin, deadly sin was in the world, and this is the sin for which Christ atoned on the cross. This is the reason for Good Friday.

The root of sin, the source of every sinful act we have done, has been nailed to the cross and blotted out by the blood of atonement. “As one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men” (Rom 5:18 ESV). That life is available to all who take Christ Jesus at his word–that this sin is a deadly serious matter, deeply engrained in all of us, and that he has atoned for it completely on the cross.

Religion

A meditation

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For Good Friday (via Dave Lull) a meditation from National Review on Holy Week by the late D. Keith Mano:

Again, I think not. God prefers, when He can, to conserve terrestrial order. He has a dramatic instinct. And His own peculiar unities. The Passion is as naturalistic as frail wrist tissue shredded by a spike. Jesus could ferment water. He could infinitely divide the loaf and the fish. But here He had need of a furnished apartment. His colt might have come about providentially, as Abraham’s ram came about, caught in some thicket. But God wanted a known colt: one that had memorable references in Jerusalem. It was His purpose to leave a clear and historical track behind — evidence that might stand up in court. The presence of transcendent power among modest instruments is more persuasive than any bullying miracle could be.

He is risen!

Religion, Uncategorized

Good Friday

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It almost seems sacrilegious to say that this Good Friday (a name that’s purposely paradoxical), is a particularly good Friday for me. But so it is. This is the day of my manumission, the day my chains were loosed. I uploaded my completed capstone project today. Assuming I don’t fail (which is always possible, if unlikely), I’m done with graduate school forever.

If anybody wants me to get a doctorate, they can get me an honorary one.

Now comes the uneasy transition to civilian life. Today I mostly vegged out on the sofa, still feeling the vague guilt any graduate student always feels, when they’re not doing school work.

Well, it wouldn’t do to celebrate too much, on Good Friday.

Speaking of which, Michael Card:

Religion

Why it’s not called “Very Bad, No Good, Horrible Friday”

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Tissot, “The Sorrowful Mother”

It’s a darker than usual Good Friday for me. I just got word that my boss, the dean of our seminary, a gentle and godly man, passed away suddenly today. He just wrote me a recommendation for graduate school. It must have been one of the very last things he did in his office.

He sat across from me in my office about a week ago, and we discussed our ages. I said I was pretty old to start working for a Master’s. He said, “I’m a decade older than you, and I’m not planning to go anywhere.”

Is it good to die on Good Friday? A complicated question, as is the whole matter of “Good” Friday.

As far as I can tell, there are two major ways of explaining evil in the world (outside of the popular view that “it’s all garbage, so let’s just have a good time until we die”) today. One is what might be called the Buddhist Way, which understands evil to be an illusion, because existence itself is an illusion, so there’s no point getting upset.

The other is what I’ll call the Christian Way (though there are probably non-Christians who hold it in some variety). That way calls for citing the Old Testament statement that “God is a Man of War,” and believing that evil is real, but that He is in the process of defeating it.

Both ways have their problems, and cannot be proved by logic or science. But I know which suits me better. Continue reading Why it’s not called “Very Bad, No Good, Horrible Friday” →

Fiction, Religion

Good Friday in Narnia

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Photo credit: Nevit Dilmen



“Please, may we come with you—wherever you are going?” said Susan.

“Well—ʺ said Aslan and seemed to be thinking. Then he said, “I should be glad of your company to-night. Yes, you may come, if you will promise to stop when I tell you, and after that leave me to go on alone.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you. And we will,” said the two girls.

Forward they went again and one of the girls walked on each side of the Lion. But how slowly he walked! And his great, royal head drooped so that his nose nearly touched the grass. Presently he stumbled and gave a low moan.

“Aslan! Dear Aslan!” said Lucy, “what is wrong? Can’t you tell us?”

“Are you ill, dear Aslan?” asked Susan.

“No,” said Aslan. “I am sad and lonely. Lay your hands on my mane so that I can feel you are there and let us walk like that.”

And so the girls did what they would never have dared to do without his permission but what they had longed to do ever since they first saw him—buried their cold hands in the beautiful sea of fur and stroked it and, so doing, walked with him. And presently they saw that they were going with him up the slope of the hill on which the Stone table stood. They went up at the side where the trees came furthest up, and when they got to the last tree (it was one that had some bushes about it) Aslan stopped and said,

“Oh, children, children. Here you must stop. And whatever happens, do not let yourselves be seen. Farewell.”

–C. S. Lewis, Chapter XIV, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Poetry

O might those sighs and tears return again

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O might those sighs and tears return again
Into my breast and eyes, which I have spent,
That I might in this holy discontent
Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourned in vain;
In mine Idolatry what showers of rain
Mine eyes did waste! what griefs my heart did rent!
That sufferance was my sin; now I repent;
‘Cause I did suffer I must suffer pain.

Th’ hydropic drunkard, and night-scouting thief,
The itchy lecher, and self-tickling proud
Have the remembrance of past joys for relief
Of comming ills. To (poor) me is allowed
No ease; for long, yet vehement grief hath been
Th’ effect and cause, the punishment and sin.

John Donne, Holy Sonnet III

Photo by Liv Bruce on Unsplash